Posted: 5/14/2010 4:40:23 AM EDT
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I mean, if you are really here to just work, or go to school, why not get the Visa? Or green card, or whatever it is that let's a non-citizen come here. Is it that hard to get your "papers"?
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It's a complete disaster, and nearly impossible if you are from certain countries and not sponsored by an employer or family member.
The process is inefficient, illogical, and redundant to excess. Imagine paying to get your fingerprints taken no less than 4 times, for example. Then, imagine the rudeness of your stereotypical DMV worker, and multiply it by an order of magnitude since the people with whom they deal have ZERO recourse. |
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It's a complete disaster, and nearly impossible if you are from certain countries and not sponsored by an employer or family member. The process is inefficient, illogical, and redundant to excess. Imagine paying to get your fingerprints taken no less than 4 times, for example. Then, imagine the rudeness of your stereotypical DMV worker, and multiply it by an order of magnitude since the people with whom they deal have ZERO recourse. This. I have a South African friend that's been in the process for 4 years now. He's going to have to leave his family behind at first. It'll be ANOTHER 3 or 4 years to get them over. All told, it's going to cost him a decade and who knows how much money to move here. |
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While I was in the Marines, one of the guys in my shop married a Porteguese woman (here from the Azores). She was in the process of becoming a citizen. For a little background, I was a 2611 (ELINT Operator/Analyst) as was everybody in my shop, so were talking about some fairly sharp guys.
For shits and giggles, we made copies of her practice exam she had to take as part of the process. Mind you, we were all either recent high-school grads or college kids who decided to join up, so US Gov and other stuff is pretty fresh material to us. We all failed. Dismally. Honestly, I think passing that test should be a requirement to get a HS Diploma. |
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I know some folks from England who were here Legally. The husband owned and account firm , the wife has something to do with wigs and hats or some shit. The oldest son got married to a citizen years and years ago and was able to stay. 2 sisters gave up and returned to England , Parrents sold their businesses , cards and home and returned to England , my friend tried for YEARS to become a citizen and never was able to become one. The youngest was born here and gladly left also. He was quickly welcomed as an English citizen.
Now we are talking a rich family who came here and did everything right. Still after years of bullshit gave up and went back. Thats some bullshit right there. Especially when we are FLOODED with illegals here in the US. |
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The same system that doesn't stop the invasion of illegals makes life a bureaucratic hell for those of us trying re-unite our families legally.
I married a foreigner overseas. Congress had passed a law equalizing the granting of visa to spouses with the processing done for fiances. (Fiances do a three step process, get a visa to get married, and can stay in the US while the other three steps are done. Before the LIFE Act, spouses had to do all SIX steps BEFORE getting a visa. Congress passed the law, but the INS - this was pre-9-11 - wasted a year and a half deciding how they felt about the law and how to implement it.) It took thousands of dollars in filing fees, help from my congressman, and almost a year and half before my wife got her visa. |
| My wife is an Immigrant (legal) and the Immigration Service run around and hoops to jump thru are simply freaking amazing. It's a bureaucratic nightmare of epic proportions, administered by pencil pushers of questionable IQ who take it upon themselves to interpert rules as they see fit. oing it legally is the right and proper thing to do, but the cost and headache of doing it that way is toll taking. |
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My experiences are dated, from about 8-12 years ago, but back then we would bring in scientists from abroad under H1B visas and sponsor them. We were a small pharma company and our dosage form was new and most of the development had been done in Europe and India so we needed guys from there. Basically, they have 5 years to get their citizenship. Our company had contracted with a law firm to oversee the entire process and make sure everything went to plan. When I left management years later, I think only about 75% had gotten their citizenship.
For example, here in North Carolina there are only two physicians that were allowed to do the health certification. One of my guys had to wait about 2 years to get his appointment. All went well in the physical as Johnny was in good physical condition. Then the doctor asked if there was anything else and Johnny said, "yeah, I've got this pain in my left side, right here. Have an idea what it might be?" A fairly standard patient/doctor question. Well, that precipitated a visit to a specialist, who did an ultrasound and found nothing unusual, probably just some muscle strain. When he tried to schedule an appointment with the first doctor to get his medical sign-off, he was put at the end of the two-year waiting list. He got the medical sign-off eventually, but since application steps are done in series, not parallel, he couldn't work on the other parts of his application and he didn't get it complete by the deadline. He had to go back home. It's just a bad bureaucratic process. It shouldn't take more than a few days or weeks but it takes years. |
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It's a complete disaster, and nearly impossible if you are from certain countries and not sponsored by an employer or family member. The process is inefficient, illogical, and redundant to excess. Imagine paying to get your fingerprints taken no less than 4 times, for example. Then, imagine the rudeness of your stereotypical DMV worker, and multiply it by an order of magnitude since the people with whom they deal have ZERO recourse. +1 the rudeness and incompetence by INS officials is something truly amazing to behold. I imagine they hire people who were fired from the DMV for being too rude, or fired from American Airlines for being too indifferent, or fired from the ATF for being too mean-spirited. 
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It's a complete disaster, and nearly impossible if you are from certain countries and not sponsored by an employer or family member. The process is inefficient, illogical, and redundant to excess. Imagine paying to get your fingerprints taken no less than 4 times, for example. Then, imagine the rudeness of your stereotypical DMV worker, and multiply it by an order of magnitude since the people with whom they deal have ZERO recourse. What he said. The legal immigration process is fucked and needs to be reformed. Its pretty racist, if you are from europe you have less chance to come here legaly than if you are from south of our border. Race should not be a factor IMO, education should. We should be good for years to come on uneducated, third world peasant types to work the low end jobs, we need a shit ton of doctors, engineer, etc types from India for one example. |
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I have a friend whose family came over from England some time ago. He started a successful company over here, employed a dozen people, contributed to the economy by purchasing some very nice things, and has two children who are straight-A students about two years from graduation. They told him recently that they would renew his papers and his wife's, but not his kids'. So the family is packing up to move to Australia. Pretty frickin' stupid, if you ask me. |
It takes years and many thousands of dollars IF you qualify. Why bother? Waiting and paying is for suckers. Just as a note: We are over one year in and near 9k in lawyers and filing fees on my wife's immigration process. INS, for some reason, does not believe our marriage is legit.
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It takes years and many thousands of dollars IF you qualify. Why bother? Waiting and paying is for suckers. Just as a note: We are over one year in and near 9k in lawyers and filing fees on my wife's immigration process. INS, for some reason, does not believe our marriage is legit. If only the government would put half the effort into going after illegals as they do people that want to do it the right way
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It's a complete disaster, and nearly impossible if you are from certain countries and not sponsored by an employer or family member. The process is inefficient, illogical, and redundant to excess. Imagine paying to get your fingerprints taken no less than 4 times, for example. Then, imagine the rudeness of your stereotypical DMV worker, and multiply it by an order of magnitude since the people with whom they deal have ZERO recourse. I watched them drive a Chinese fellow insane here. He had recently moved here and needed to get his license in MS. He had an AL license. He was from AL. Sometime in the past, he had Immigrated. I understood every word he said. She kept saying he couldn't get a drivers license because he is from China. He gave up and walked out after arguing with her, in very good English. I swear, you have to be made of solid dog sh!t to get hired at the DMV. 100% solid, inside and out. Not hollow like an easter bunny. Soild. Filled to the core with dog sh!t. I hate everyone that works there. |
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Quoted: I mean, if you are really here to just work, or go to school, why not get the Visa? Or green card, or whatever it is that let's a non-citizen come here. Is it that hard to get your "papers"? And that's probably the easiest path to get a green card short of marrying a US Citizen. |
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Oh and here's something else that they won't say when they talk about "reform." So, say for poops and giggles we allow the 10-30 million illegals to stay and go to the "back of the line." Each one of those people will need a sponsor who signs a form that promises that they will pay back the state if the applicant uses any social assistance ie welfare, in the next ten years. Each one of those sponsors will have to PROVE income over the poverty line or assets six times that value. That means each illegal let in, will have to have one sponsor, that's 10-30 million sponsors. That will never happen. They will wave that requirement, mark my words.
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Quoted: It's a complete disaster, and nearly impossible if you are from certain countries and not sponsored by an employer or family member. The process is inefficient, illogical, and redundant to excess. Imagine paying to get your fingerprints taken no less than 4 times, for example. Then, imagine the rudeness of your stereotypical DMV worker, and multiply it by an order of magnitude since the people with whom they deal have ZERO recourse. And there's not enough openings. |
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When I was going through the K1 visa process to bring my wife here they gave her a specific date and time to be at the consulate in Juarez with all of her paperwork, but thankfully someone told us to get in line at 3:00AM if we want to get into the consulate that day. If you don't get into the building then you have to reschedule and that could either be a few days or a month later. Once you get in the whole process becomes a real adventure of going from building to building getting health exams, photos taken, fingerprinted, different paperwork, lots of waiting in lines, then finally get a package that you have to hand in at the border so you can finally get the temporary visa, and you better have exact change for everything or you get turned away. The people we dealt with there were nice to us, but the immigration office in St. Louis is another story. From the start of the process to permanent resident status was about 2 years. |
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Another question; Say you get married overseas, does that make your spouse's transition to citizenship any quicker? No. In fact, it's slightly slower. There is only one office in the US that processes K-3 (spouse) visa applications. It took me about a year to get my wife into the country to join me, and we'd been married for more than a year before starting the immigration process. If she had only been a fiancé, then it probably would have taken half the time. There are two aspects to the wait: 1. You send in an application that has to be approved in the US. Depending on where you live and the load at the site that you have to send your paperwork to, expect 3-6 months. 2. After you've been approved stateside, you have to schedule an immigration appointment at the US embassy in your wife's country. Easy, right? Well, the wait time in Bangkok was approximately 4 months to get an interview slot. Once you get into the US on a spousal visa, you then have to apply to adjust her status to Permanent Resident (to get the green card). 1. Fill out applications, all of which duplicate information found in your original visa application. 2. Fill out an affidavit of support and send in copies of your last 3 tax returns. Sound familiar? Yes, you did this 6 months ago when you first applied. But you have to do it again. 3. Wait for your paperwork to be processed. 4. When your paperwork is processed, you get scheduled for an interview at a USCIS office. 5. Receive Green Card. Total cost (if you do the paperwork yourself and don't pay an attorney) is now up to about $1500. However, paying an attorney can be a smart move, since USCIS is very picky about your paperwork. They like to reject applications and send them back for writing things like "None" where they'd like to see "N/A" or vice versa. |
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When I was going through the K1 visa process to bring my wife here they gave her a specific date and time to be at the consulate in Juarez with all of her paperwork, but thankfully someone told us to get in line at 3:00AM if we want to get into the consulate that day. If you don't get into the building then you have to reschedule and that could either be a few days or a month later. Once you get in the whole process becomes a real adventure of going from building to building getting health exams, photos taken, fingerprinted, different paperwork, lots of waiting in lines, then finally get a package that you have to hand in at the border so you can finally get the temporary visa, and you better have exact change for everything or you get turned away. The people we dealt with there were nice to us, but the immigration office in St. Louis is another story. From the start of the process to permanent resident status was about 2 years. Was Juarez the only consulate they would let you go to? I know for several classes of Visas, it is the only game in town. It doesn't matter if you are from Mexico City. The irony is the same US State Department that tells you to travel to Juarez and makes you wait out there at 3am will then send you a travel notification advising against travel to Juarez and warning that - of you insist in going - to only be out in daylight. It wouldn't surprise me if some State Department official isn't connected to the hotel business in that town. How did you like that racket they have going with the "approved" health exams? Not even the US Army Medical Center in El Paso is "approved" by the Consulate in Juarez. |
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Another question; Say you get married overseas, does that make your spouse's transition to citizenship any quicker? No. In fact, it's slightly slower. There is only one office in the US that processes K-3 (spouse) visa applications. It took me about a year to get my wife into the country to join me, and we'd been married for more than a year before starting the immigration process. If she had only been a fiancé, then it probably would have taken half the time. There are two aspects to the wait: 1. You send in an application that has to be approved in the US. Depending on where you live and the load at the site that you have to send your paperwork to, expect 3-6 months. 2. After you've been approved stateside, you have to schedule an immigration appointment at the US embassy in your wife's country. Easy, right? Well, the wait time in Bangkok was approximately 4 months to get an interview slot. Once you get into the US on a spousal visa, you then have to apply to adjust her status to Permanent Resident (to get the green card). 1. Fill out applications, all of which duplicate information found in your original visa application. 2. Fill out an affidavit of support and send in copies of your last 3 tax returns. Sound familiar? Yes, you did this 6 months ago when you first applied. But you have to do it again. 3. Wait for your paperwork to be processed. 4. When your paperwork is processed, you get scheduled for an interview at a USCIS office. 5. Receive Green Card. Total cost (if you do the paperwork yourself and don't pay an attorney) is now up to about $1500. However, paying an attorney can be a smart move, since USCIS is very picky about your paperwork. They like to reject applications and send them back for writing things like "None" where they'd like to see "N/A" or vice versa. Not just USCIS, since you are also dealign with UD DoS. Two completely different agencies who really do not talk to each other. This is part of the reason for the redundancy. Fiance visa is faster, but you have to surrender any other visas in order to get it - then, you cannot leave the US until your green card comes through, as the fiance Visa allows a one-time entry only. I've known people who just got married in the US under tourist visas and sucked it up and paid the fine. Immigration officials will threaten deportation though - so buyer beware. |
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It's a complete disaster, and nearly impossible if you are from certain countries and not sponsored by an employer or family member. The process is inefficient, illogical, and redundant to excess. Imagine paying to get your fingerprints taken no less than 4 times, for example. Then, imagine the rudeness of your stereotypical DMV worker, and multiply it by an order of magnitude since the people with whom they deal have ZERO recourse. +1 the rudeness and incompetence by INS officials is something truly amazing to behold. I imagine they hire people who were fired from the DMV for being too rude, or fired from American Airlines for being too indifferent, or fired from the ATF for being too mean-spirited.
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It's a complete disaster, and nearly impossible if you are from certain countries and not sponsored by an employer or family member. The process is inefficient, illogical, and redundant to excess. Imagine paying to get your fingerprints taken no less than 4 times, for example. Then, imagine the rudeness of your stereotypical DMV worker, and multiply it by an order of magnitude since the people with whom they deal have ZERO recourse. I watched them drive a Chinese fellow insane here. He had recently moved here and needed to get his license in MS. He had an AL license. He was from AL. Sometime in the past, he had Immigrated. I understood every word he said. She kept saying he couldn't get a drivers license because he is from China. He gave up and walked out after arguing with her, in very good English. I swear, you have to be made of solid dog sh!t to get hired at the DMV. 100% solid, inside and out. Not hollow like an easter bunny. Soild. Filled to the core with dog sh!t. I hate everyone that works there. The Social Security Administration is currently my "federal agency I most love to hate for their unfathomable bureaucratic incompetence and ignorance." Several state's DMV's make my list. |
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Fiance visa is faster, but you have to surrender any other visas in order to get it - then, you cannot leave the US until your green card comes through, as the fiance Visa allows a one-time entry only. I've known people who just got married in the US under tourist visas and sucked it up and paid the fine. Immigration officials will threaten deportation though - so buyer beware. In my case, we were married in the US and returned to Germany for another three years before we came back to the US-took six months (pre 9/11) for my wife's Green Card to come through with just one visit to the consulate in Frankfurt and medical exam. No Newlywed Game style questioning either in our case. |
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It's a complete disaster, and nearly impossible if you are from certain countries and not sponsored by an employer or family member. The process is inefficient, illogical, and redundant to excess. Imagine paying to get your fingerprints taken no less than 4 times, for example. Then, imagine the rudeness of your stereotypical DMV worker, and multiply it by an order of magnitude since the people with whom they deal have ZERO recourse. Is it that we discriminate against certain countries or is it that we try to equally dispense green cards to countries regardless of their proximity to us. I bet there are more Mexicans clamoring for a visa than Thai just due to the distance. However, I'd hate to see Thais being excluded due to a deluge of Mexicans. We've got to be fair. But we've also got to have a sane immigration flow that allows us to assimilate new Americans or at least make sure that we're considering the working class of our own country first. |
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I know some folks from England who were here Legally. The husband owned and account firm , the wife has something to do with wigs and hats or some shit. The oldest son got married to a citizen years and years ago and was able to stay. 2 sisters gave up and returned to England , Parrents sold their businesses , cards and home and returned to England , my friend tried for YEARS to become a citizen and never was able to become one. The youngest was born here and gladly left also. He was quickly welcomed as an English citizen. Now we are talking a rich family who came here and did everything right. Still after years of bullshit gave up and went back. Thats some bullshit right there. Especially when we are FLOODED with illegals here in the US. My experience has been the opposite. My dad brought my mom back from Vietnam. They got divorced after like six years of marriage. She never went through the citizenship process until two years ago. Her english still isn't that good. I basically had to call around to find records for her and put together a package of information. They got her citizenship really quickly. If the test is difficult, no way my mom would pass it. This was all before the Obama election so the immigration service was working double time to get people in so they could vote for the One. Yes my mom voted for the One. Lord have mercy on my soul. |
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Yes, it is that hard. Imagine that your last interaction with the DMV was a 5 year process, cost you many thousands of dollars, and involved things like pre-appointment appointments, lots of letters notifying you about other letters that may or may not be on the way, and interaction with countless .gov drones. Like any and every .gov operation, it is long, expensive, inefficient, and completely retarded in every way conceivable. Then you turn on the TV and see ASSHOLES in the United States that do nothing but bitch about everything they think they're entitled to just because they happen to have been lucky enough to have been born in the U.S. instead of the third world shithole their ancestors came from.
The enemy is not the illegals. The enemy is among us, they are citizens, and they vote democrat. |
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My dad doesn't really talk about my mom's citizenship process a lot - they obviously have a real sore spot for it since a) it was a PITA to get my mom here, and b) my mom is a case manager at a border town hospital and deals with the shitbirds who run over the border when their water breaks and clog up the ER because they want some Motrin.
But from what I remember it involves a letter to a state congressman. My mom had gone back to the Philippines for her father's funeral (this was already after she'd found a job here in TX as a nurse). She was already planning to get married to my dad when her dad died. But they weren't going to allow her back in the U.S. for some stupid reason or another. Anyway, long story short, it got worked out somehow - after a lot of headache and money spent, she's a naturalized US citizen. So yes, it is hard to do it the legal way, and I detest anyone who cheats their way in. |
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I mean, if you are really here to just work, or go to school, why not get the Visa? Or green card, or whatever it is that let's a non-citizen come here. Is it that hard to get your "papers"? GF has relatives in the process of emigrating right now, they may be here before 2011, it's taken ten years of paperwork (and fees) to get to this point. If they scurried up into the US via Mexico they could have been here illegally back in 2001. |
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It's a complete disaster, and nearly impossible if you are from certain countries and not sponsored by an employer or family member. The process is inefficient, illogical, and redundant to excess. Imagine paying to get your fingerprints taken no less than 4 times, for example. Then, imagine the rudeness of your stereotypical DMV worker, and multiply it by an order of magnitude since the people with whom they deal have ZERO recourse. +1 the rudeness and incompetence by INS officials is something truly amazing to behold. I imagine they hire people who were fired from the DMV for being too rude, or fired from American Airlines for being too indifferent, or fired from the ATF for being too mean-spirited.
Rude and incompetent bureaucrats, who basically can't be fired for being rude or incompetent, no problems with that government agency though- nope, none at all. 
BTW, DK, they are- if you can believe it, even worse when dealing with native-born citizens acting on behalf of those trying to immigrate or already here and trying to keep their forms/fees/paperwork in legal order. That agency is a joke of efficiency, it would be funny if it wasn't so despicable and pathetic how they play God with so many people's lives. |
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I'll just chime in too: yes the legal immigration process is difficult and confusing. If you want to do it, you would be well advised to hire an immigration lawyer to help you, who you go back to whenever there is any sort of paperwork to do or questions to ask. I think the MAIN problem, though, is that it's slow. I have a Bulgarian friend whose visa was running out at the end of April. She applied for an extension in January but it wasn't until mid-April that she heard back the result of the application: denied. She filed an appeal and is waiting to hear the results. It's really a stressful situation to put someone in –– making them wait so long to hear the result of the application, with so little time left to do anything about it if there's a problem. If she has to go home, she's probably looking at 6+ months to get approved to come back on another work visa, and that's assuming she can get in under the quota. If the turn-around was closer to, say, 2 weeks, there would be a lot less stress and confusion for people trying to be here legally. That's why you really need a lawyer. You'd better make sure everything is in order the first time because it will take months to find out there was anything wrong with your application. I'm just afraid that when the Obama administration tries to do "immigration reform", they're going to fuck it all up, just like they did with "health care reform". Yes there are problems. Yes it needs reform. But what they NEED to do is something relatively simple and straight-forward which I think would get broad support. What Zero is going to end up proposing is another 2500 pages of bullshit that have only a glancing impact on the bottom line problem. Incidentally, I don't support amnesty and I definitely don't support open borders. What I would support is preferential treatment for people that have demonstrated a willingness to work with the system, as fucked up as it is. If someone comes into the country legally, pays their taxes and doesn't get in trouble, we should be rubber stamping their ability to stay, within reasonable limits. I think the visa program should be more like a "trial period". If you pass the trial, then the road to full immigration should be paved. (Side note: "immigration" = green card, the path to American citizenship. "Visa" = temporary visitor, e.g. tourist visa or work visa or school visa. Visas are hard. Green cards are harder, and basically impossible unless you already have family here.) |
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Me and my family are very good friends with a PhD chemist. He's from Mexico. He came here legally to do grad school, married an American citizen, and stayed. He's a professor at a college. I think he's going on year 7 of the process or something. It's like, "Oh, you're an unemployable below minimum wage part time drug runner with multiple convictions and three DUI arrests? Hell, let's give you amnesty! You? You're a PhD chemist from the same country who's never been in trouble anywhere and has a great job? Fuck you!" He also friggin' <i>hates</i> illegals. He's still boycotting places that shut down for that May 1st protest like five years ago. |
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Oh and here's something else that they won't say when they talk about "reform." So, say for poops and giggles we allow the 10-30 million illegals to stay and go to the "back of the line." Each one of those people will need a sponsor who signs a form that promises that they will pay back the state if the applicant uses any social assistance ie welfare, in the next ten years. Each one of those sponsors will have to PROVE income over the poverty line or assets six times that value. That means each illegal let in, will have to have one sponsor, that's 10-30 million sponsors. That will never happen. They will wave that requirement, mark my words. WOW!!!! i had no idea of this... gonna be hard to find someone that will be finacially responsable for you for TEN YEARS!!!! |
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My Danish friend Claus said it took three years for him to get Resident Alien status.
Another co-worker, who is South African, had his entire application file lost when he moved from CA to D.C. The INS threatened him with deportation because they couldn't even find the record of his entry or his work visa. He caught the ear of an DOJ assistant to Janet Reno on a gig (he's an Audio Engineer) and he had his papers in three months. Dave is a real bastard, he's the one who always checks the box for "African-American" whenever he has to fill out a form. 
I have seen Negroes agitated to a state of high non-amusement by it. He simply states that, "I was born in Africa and so was my father. How about you?" That usually shuts them up. |
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Me and my family are very good friends with a PhD chemist. He's from Mexico. He came here legally to do grad school, married an American citizen, and stayed. He's a professor at a college. I think he's going on year 7 of the process or something. It's like, "Oh, you're an unemployable below minimum wage part time drug runner with multiple convictions and three DUI arrests? Hell, let's give you amnesty! You? You're a PhD chemist from the same country who's never been in trouble anywhere and has a great job? Fuck you!" He also friggin' <i>hates</i> illegals. He's still boycotting places that shut down for that May 1st protest like five years ago. The much-hated "amnesty" provision in the recent attempt at reform would have required illegal immigrants in the US to apply for residence from their home country and be subject to the same scrutiny and restrictions of anyone currently applying should they ever hope to become a citizen. It was probably the best we ever would have had (especially with the serious reform provisions) but was shit down due to such claims of "amnesty" that really weren't. Of course, the biggest reform we need is to amend the Constitution and get rid of automatic citizenship by birth. One parent must be able to demonstrate valid legal residence in the US in order for the kid to be granted citizenship, IMHO. |
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Fiance visa is faster, but you have to surrender any other visas in order to get it - then, you cannot leave the US until your green card comes through, as the fiance Visa allows a one-time entry only. I've known people who just got married in the US under tourist visas and sucked it up and paid the fine. Immigration officials will threaten deportation though - so buyer beware. In my case, we were married in the US and returned to Germany for another three years before we came back to the US-took six months (pre 9/11) for my wife's Green Card to come through with just one visit to the consulate in Frankfurt and medical exam. No Newlywed Game style questioning either in our case. I've heard a lot of good things about this consulate in Frankfurt - in fact, it has been recommended to me twice by people who have been unfortunate enough to hear me rant about the Social Security Administration. It might be worth a day trip. |
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Even with an 8:30am APPOINTMENT for my German wife's green card renewal, we didn't get out of the INS office until 2 in the afternoon after spending all of 20 minutes in contact with office staff.  They let you in? Back when the wife was going through the process, they wouldn't let me in. Also had the experience of standing in line outside of the INS office for 2 hours just to get an appointment. I wasn't allowed inside until the final interview. On the day of the "swearing in", unbeknownst to me, my wife volunteered to speak at the ceremony. She is one of the few that took the opportunity to speak. Very emotional for me. 
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It's a complete disaster, and nearly impossible if you are from certain countries and not sponsored by an employer or family member. The process is inefficient, illogical, and redundant to excess. Imagine paying to get your fingerprints taken no less than 4 times, for example. Then, imagine the rudeness of your stereotypical DMV worker, and multiply it by an order of magnitude since the people with whom they deal have ZERO recourse. Is it that we discriminate against certain countries or is it that we try to equally dispense green cards to countries regardless of their proximity to us. I bet there are more Mexicans clamoring for a visa than Thai just due to the distance. However, I'd hate to see Thais being excluded due to a deluge of Mexicans. We've got to be fair. But we've also got to have a sane immigration flow that allows us to assimilate new Americans or at least make sure that we're considering the working class of our own country first. There are quotas that determine the number of immigrants from a country/region in a given year. You could have 1000 chemists/doctors/engineers/businessmen lined up in Thailand and 1000 unskilled unmotivated fucks from Mexico/any given region and because Thailand/region has reached its quota and Mexico/Region has not, those worthless laborers will be let in. |
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Me and my family are very good friends with a PhD chemist. He's from Mexico. He came here legally to do grad school, married an American citizen, and stayed. He's a professor at a college. I think he's going on year 7 of the process or something. It's like, "Oh, you're an unemployable below minimum wage part time drug runner with multiple convictions and three DUI arrests? Hell, let's give you amnesty! You? You're a PhD chemist from the same country who's never been in trouble anywhere and has a great job? Fuck you!" He also friggin' <i>hates</i> illegals. He's still boycotting places that shut down for that May 1st protest like five years ago. The much-hated "amnesty" provision in the recent attempt at reform would have required illegal immigrants in the US to apply for residence from their home country and be subject to the same scrutiny and restrictions of anyone currently applying should they ever hope to become a citizen. It was probably the best we ever would have had (especially with the serious reform provisions) but was shit down due to such claims of "amnesty" that really weren't. Of course, the biggest reform we need is to amend the Constitution and get rid of automatic citizenship by birth. One parent must be able to demonstrate valid legal residence in the US in order for the kid to be granted citizenship, IMHO. THIS! + 87 BILLION If it were up to me, though, I'd take that one step farther, and require EVERYONE to meet the citizenship requirements (speak english, pass a civics and history test). |
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legal immigration is difficult for a reason. we only want the well to do or skilled coming here. which would you rather have as a visitor to your home:
a) engineer/doctor/skilled person who will provide engineering services, healthcare or repairwork to you or your house b) criminal, illiterate, unskilled person who wants to steal your shit then mow your neighbolrs lawn while drinking all your beer and eating the food out of your fridge ? Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile |